Opinion Brief: Thursday, November 5, 2015

Tonight’s Opinion Brief is brought to you by the Government Relations Institute of Canada. Join us on November 10th for a Post-Election Pundit Panel to gain insight into what to expect next from Canada’s new federal government. Register Today!

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Good evening, subscribers. There’s a thing in Canadian culture we call “tall poppy syndrome” — meaning we don’t like our public figures to get too awfully ambitious. If that holds for politics as well, then what might become of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if he botches just one of the high-flying commitments he’s made for his government’s first term?

Trudeau’s governing agenda is almost without precedent in federal politics; he seems to want to do everything, all at once. Michael Harris says Trudeau will have to be both very good and very lucky to avoid falling victim to the Obama Curse. “So it is with promises: there’s the ‘if’, but also the ‘when’. For Obama, ‘Change You Can Believe In’ too often turned into Change Denied or Deferred. What will become of Trudeau’s ‘Real Change’ over the long hours of the legislative clock?”

David Krayden says Trudeau also risks deflating the hopes of many Canadians if he fails to give Parliament back to MPs — reform that was promised but never delivered by Stephen Harper, another politician elected on a vow to do politics differently. “The irony is stunning: open government was a key component of Reform Party Leader Preston Manning’s vision, which was stymied and belittled by his ideological successor, Stephen Harper — and is now being taken up by Trudeau.”

And just to hammer home the point that a lot of people have a lot of hope riding on Trudeau’s shoulders, here’s Alex Neve and Béatrice Vaugrante of Amnesty International Canada calling on the new federal government to take immediate steps to restore Canada’s reputation as an international champion of peacemaking and human rights. “It’s easy to dismiss Canada’s former global role as a bridge-builder as dewy-eyed optimism. But there’s truth in the nostalgia — and something important has been lost.”